Digital Subscriber Line
Digital subscriber line (DSL, originally digital subscriber loop) is a family of technologies that provide internet access by transmitting digital data over the wires of a local telephone network.
Telephones are connected to the telephone exchange via a local loop, which is a physical pair of wires. Prior to the digital age, the use of the local loop for anything other than the transmission of speech, encompassing an audio frequency range of 300 to 3400 Hertz (voiceband or commercial bandwidth) was not considered. However, as long distance trunks were gradually converted from analog to digital operation, the idea of being able to pass data through the local loop (by utilizing frequencies above the voiceband) took hold, ultimately leading to DSL.
Source: wikipedia
